There isn’t one iconic play that Chadwick recalls when he thinks about Maye’s high school career, mostly because Myers Park didn’t spend much time in late-game chaos when Maye was in control.
“He only played in the fourth quarter in two games,” Chadwick said of Maye’s junior season, his final high school season because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We averaged 50 points a game that year.”
But if Chadwick has to point to a moment that announced Maye to anyone outside their bubble, he goes back to a road playoff trip to Richmond County — the kind of place where most teams simply tried to survive.
Maye, a sophomore, didn’t.
“He threw for well over 300 yards and just lit them up,” Chadwick said. “And people didn’t do that at Richmond County.”
Chadwick remembers it as more than a win that moved a bracket along; it was the night the conversation around Myers Park and its quarterback changed.
What made the performance possible, Chadwick said, wasn’t just talent. It was how Maye thought about the game and the people around him.
At halftime in those years, Maye would grab the stat sheet, but not for the reason you might assume.
“What Drake was doing was he was seeing how many balls each receiver had caught and how many targets each receiver had had,” Chadwick said, adding that if someone was light on touches, Maye would walk over with ideas to fix it. “He would come to me and be like, ‘Hey, I think this play might work.’”
Chadwick said Maye was “an overwhelming encourager,” a quarterback who “never ever made it about himself.” The next step they wanted, he said — the piece they never got to fully coach because Maye’s senior season was wiped out by the pandemic — was learning when to be more demanding, to “hold people a little more accountable.”
It’s one reason that the lost season still stings.
“My biggest disappointment ever in my coaching life was not being able to have Drake’s senior year,” Chadwick said, adding it wasn’t about wins. “It has more to do with the fact I didn’t get to be around him.”
And yet, the absence of that season didn’t slow the momentum. The spotlight found Maye anyway.
Chadwick remembers one Wednesday practice before a semifinal week and counting the crowd: “There was, like, 27 college coaches that came to our practice that week.” Myers Park had other Division I prospects, he said, but the head coaches were there for the same reason — they “wanted to see this sophomore quarterback that everybody was talking about.”
Maye’s father, Mark, was a quarterback at UNC. His brothers, Luke and Beau, played basketball at UNC. Luke even won a national championship. A lot of people believed this made the Tar Heels a favorite to land Drake Maye, but his college destination, Chadwick said, wasn’t pre-written.
After his sophomore season, Maye told Chadwick to make sure recruiters understood one thing: “He wasn’t going to Carolina.” He wanted a “football first” place, Chadwick said, and his finalists eventually narrowed to Ohio State, Clemson, and Alabama.
After Ohio State and Clemson found quarterbacks, Maye committed to Alabama. However, the Crimson Tide eventually flipped Bryce Young from USC, and that led Maye to consider his options.
Maye spent a lot of time in Chapel Hill watching Luke play basketball. Newly rehired UNC football coach Mack Brown had coaches at basketball games regularly, and they took the opportunity to talk to Maye.
“I remember Drake coming in my office … saying, ‘Hey. I think I’m gonna flip and go from Alabama, and I’m gonna go to North Carolina,” Chadwick recalled. “I was like, first off, I don’t care. It’s your life, you do what you want. I said, ‘But you realize you told me to tell people for a year that you weren’t gonna go there.’”
It wasn’t a big deal for Chadwick. He was happy to help his quarterback however he could.
Except for one thing.
“I said, ‘Now look, though. I’m not calling Coach (Nick) Saban. I’ll make phone calls for you, but I ain’t calling Coach Saban and telling him that,’” Chadwick remembered.
Maye did make it to Chapel Hill, where he immediately looked like a future NFL player. In 30 games for the Tar Heels, Maye completed 618-of-952 passes for 8,018 yards and 63 touchdowns with 16 interceptions. He also rushed for 1,209 yards and 16 touchdowns.
